Transformations of the Adventure in Novels, Novellas and Dramas of the Early 20th Century (Mann, Musil, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler)

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The project intends to illuminate the significance of the narrative and experiential pattern of adventure in modern literature by focussing on German novels which either have become paradigms of the genre of the Bildungsroman or testify to an intense dialogue with its tradition. While the narrative of Bildung is generally considered to be a critique of the adventure, this project starts out from the observation that the relation is ambivalent and marked by repulsion as well as attraction. On the basis of the research of the first funding period which was devoted to Goethe’s "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" and Keller’s "Der grüne Heinrich", the second funding period will address the question of adventure in Thomas Mann’s "Der Zauberberg" and Robert Musil’s "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften". Whereas Goethe and Keller are interested in adventure as narrative pattern and genre of storytelling, Mann’s and Musil’s fascination with adventure is inseparable from the First World War. What is at stake in their novels is adventure as a mode of experience ('Erlebnis') and as epitome of an anti-bourgeois way of life. They seek to understand the desire for adventure which surfaced in the euphoria of the so-called 'Augusterlebnis' of 1914. At the same time, they engage in a dialogue with the genre of the Bildungsroman which, in their view, does not represent a counternarrative to adventure. Rather, they connect their own novels to the tradition of this genre precisely to the extent that the narrative of Bildung is compatible with the notion of adventure. The project will pay particular attention to Mann’s and Musil’s analyses of the relation between violence and amorous adventures, to the processes of regression and the dynamics of transgression which the narrative representation of these adventures involve, and to their social, cultural and psychological preconditions and implications. In addition, the project will follow a byway and explore the fin de siècle and pre-war discourse on adventures and adventurers, focussing on dramas and novellas by Hofmannsthal and Schnitzler which are based on the memoirs of the paradigmatic amorous adventurer Casanova. Like the ideology of war as an adventurous 'Erlebnis' the pre-war discourse on adventure is strongly influenced by contemporary philosophies of life. Precisely because of this common philosophical basis it can serve as a foil for highlighting the fundamental transformations which the concept of adventure underwent in the wake of the First World War.